Because: Vignettes from Three Quiet Evenings
by blacktop
Summary: Reese and Carter confront tough and troubling issues together. Rated for emotionally triggering themes.
1. Chapter 1

_A Thursday in April, after midnight_

"Was it because of the sex?"

Because her head was still buzzing from the orgasm she had just shared with him, Carter thought it best to keep her answer to Reese's mysterious question brief.

"Yes."

She hugged him hard, reaching her arms as far around his shoulders as they would go. The muscles there were tightly bunched as though the sex hadn't achieved its usual release.

She was surprised that his eyes were so clear; he usually wanted to drift off at this point in the proceedings.

Still inside her, panting lightly between his words, he didn't use his forearms to lift the weight off of her as he usually did.

As her tongue traced the outer rim of his ear, she whispered softly so as not to disturb him if he indeed was falling asleep.

"I don't have a clue what you're talking about. But I'm going to go with that answer. Do I win a prize?"

Before he lowered his head to rest it against her collarbone, she glimpsed tears sparkling in his magnificent eyes.

John was frequently blue these days.

Sometimes he was moody in the aftermath of a tough case, especially one requiring a significant show of force. Where she and Fusco usually felt exhilarated when they saved another life and even Harold occasionally celebrated by joining them for a drink, John's usual pattern was to retreat for a day of reflection.

He also brooded when time stretched too long between cases or when the intellectual and physical challenges of the assignment were minimal.

Every once in a long while, she worried that she might be the cause of his fits of melancholy. But then she rejected that conclusion again when new evidence of his fierce attention and passion brought home to her just where they stood.

That this strange man, so mercurial and reticent, actually seemed content with the haphazard life they shared was a constant source of amazement to her. If she were to read about the affair in a novel, she would reject the tale as flat-out ridiculous.

Nothing about it was even slightly romantic, in her view; it wasn't ideal by any reasonable measure. It was rough-hewn, awkward, sticky, often uncomfortable, and rarely predictable. It wasn't normal by any stretch of the definition.

But it seemed to work for them for right now. That was all she could ask or want.

She did worry about the boredom though. John without a task to perform or an order to carry out was a dangerous proposition.

She remembered that day the previous spring when his restlessness drove him to an underground gambling hall in the Bronx frequented by immigrants from Southeast Asia. He had stayed at the blackjack table for twenty six straight hours, first winning and ultimately losing more than she earned in a year.

Another time when the gap between cases extended to two weeks, John had abruptly taken off on a solo motorcycle trek through New England ending up on an island off the coast of Maine. He kept in touch with her and Harold only through infrequent phone calls, the terseness of which frightened her and infuriated his friend.

And she recalled a few terrible nights when he simply submerged his restless mind in alcohol.

Violence was also a distracting resort, although she hoped it was a last one. She suspected that some of the scraped knuckles and split lips she treated with her home first-aid kit were the result of minor fights John picked just because he was bored.

And occasionally he was moody after sex.

This was their third straight evening together. Twice at her apartment and now at his loft.

She wondered if the regularity of the sex affected his temperament; taking the edge off, replacing desperate ardor with doubt or even complacency.

So when he rolled off her and settled against her side, she decided to pursue the issue.

"You know, my brain is still fried. I need a moment to catch my breath."

She kept her voice lilting and a smile on her lips.

"So forgive me if I'm not following you too well, John. But if you ask again, real slow, maybe I'll come up with a better answer."

He seemed determined to get to the bottom of something, so he took her up on the offer.

"What you said to Donnelly about me being a good man. Was that because of the sex?"

She was stunned.

Had he really been stewing over that for all these months? Gnawing at this bare bone since that awful winter midnight when Agent Donnelly had arrested them, cuffed them into his van, and challenged her motivation for working with John's vigilante mission.

How in the world could she answer this?

It seemed to her that there was no possible reply that was the right one, the one that would assuage his fears and calm his insecurities.

So she decided that using a little more frankness than she ordinarily would was the only way forward.

She stroked the hair back from his brow twice, wiping drops of perspiration from the root of his cowlick.

"You know the sex is good, dontcha? I'm not gonna lie, some days the craving is pretty strong."

This wasn't exactly raw talk, but it was not her usual style and she felt herself squirming under his curiosity.

"And, well, to get right down to it. There've been some afternoons in the precinct where you'd phone me about some nonsense or another. And then I couldn't think straight about a single damn thing 'til I got my hands on you again."

She could see he was surprised by her boldness: the horizontal lines across his forehead vanished and his eyes sparked as they roved over her face.

His ears felt warm to the touch and she adored how the red crept from cheeks to throat to chest as she watched.

Ego-boosting 101 was easy when it had the additional power of being God's own gospel truth.

She placed a tiny kiss at each corner of his mouth when his teeth showed in a slight smile.

"But you've got to know too that what I feel about you, what I know about you, comes from a whole 'nother place."

"What place?"

"The place where I know right from wrong. Where I make my choices, set my true course."

"Your moral compass."

"Yeah, like you said before: my damn moral compass."

She sighed to see the sadness that flashed across his face at the memory of that first conversation in the Lyric Cafe.

"So, do I look real good to you up here on this freaking perfect pedestal? Because I hate it, ya know. I always hated it. I jumped off months ago. Or didn't you notice?"

"I noticed. I just didn't like it."

"Your pedestal, O.K. But my choice, my life."

"I know."

"Yeah, you know, John. But you don't buy it, do you?"

After a long while he answered, slowly, like she was dragging the words out of him.

"No, I can't."

So, this was his bottom line, his unchangeable truth.

The blunt expression of it seemed to relieve him at last. She noticed that his unburdened shoulders were relaxed now and the muscles of his jaw unclenched as he gazed at her.

But she was tensing up; her breaths expelled in short bursts across his face.

"Jeez, that makes me sound all stuck up and goody-goody."

The finger he played over her clavicle traced intricate patterns like a figure-skater. His hand floated lightly along the under curve of her breast. She lost the train of conversation as the sensations he was creating in her body washed over her again.

After a pause, his next words confused her.

"What's wrong with that?"

"With what?"

"With being a good girl?"

"I went all through high school with those shitty labels: 'Miss Stuck-up, Thinks She's Too Fine for the Rest of Us, Little Goody Two Shoes.'"

The real taunts had been much uglier, but she didn't intend to share those with him.

He was playful now, teasing her out of her glumness, the corners of his lips curling down into a flirtatious pout.

"Were you?"

"Yeah, probably, a little."

The admission didn't sting too much anymore, lying here like this with him. He lifted his leg over her thigh and drew her closer to his body.

"So I wouldn't have stood a chance with you in high school, hunh?"

She hesitated to say it, but it was true.

"No, probably not."

He grinned, the leer softened by the affectionate glow from his eyes.

"So was I the boy your mother warned you about? That boy who only wanted 'One Thing?' "

He raised his fingers to make quotation marks.

She passed her hand along the bulge of his bicep following the curve of a vein, touching briefly at the pulse throbbing under pale skin at the crook of his elbow.

"Yeah. Took me a long while to figure out what she was talking about exactly. What that 'One Thing' really was."

He leaned over her, pressing his chest against hers, the frosting of hairs tickling her nipples again.

"So when did you figure it out exactly?"

"Not until senior year of college."

He kissed her lightly on the nose.

"So you left a whole army of boys dead from frustration, hunh?"

"I don't know about that. No one even asked me for a date in high school."

He spoke then with the bracing certainty of a professor explaining an established scientific fact.

"All the boys were intimidated by you, Joss. Horny and scared is an awful tough combination. Millions of boys die every year from that, you know."

"And you know that from experience, do you?"

"Sure. Girls in my high school weren't interested in a skinny kid with no money, no car, a bad haircut, and a weekly date with the principal."

She laid soft kisses over his eyelids and felt them flutter under her lips.

"Even these eyes didn't make a dent with those girls? What were they? Stupid or blind or what?"

He didn't say anything and she kissed him again, this time on the dimple on his nose, then softly on the mouth.

He parted his lips and let his tongue dance along the seam of her lips. But she wanted to get in another question.

"So when did you…? Uh… You know…?" Her former boldness had fled.

"Lose my virginity?"

"Yeah."

"Junior year of high school. Natalie Pace. Waitress who worked with my mother."

"She your age?"

"Eight years older. She was between boyfriends."

"Oh, I see."

But she didn't, not really.

He skipped his index finger over the little frown line between her brows.

She thought his next words had a consoling tone, but whether the comfort was aimed at her or at himself, she didn't know for sure.

"It wasn't so bad. She needed something, I needed something. So it all worked out, I guess."

"Did your mother know?"

"Mom would have killed me - and Natalie - if she found out. So no, she didn't know."

He breathed a small sigh that ruffled her eyelashes.

"We practiced 'Don't ask, don't tell' real early in our family."

He kissed her again, this time with intense purpose. He was through with talking.

Through with brooding. Until the next time.


	2. Chapter 2

_One week later_

"Mmmm…Ice creeeam." John's Homer Simpson voice preceded him through the bedroom door.

Soft, comical, insinuating, seductive.

Cradling a pint of pistachio and two tablespoons against his bare chest, he clutched his unfastened trousers to his waist as he tiptoed back to their disheveled bed.

Taylor was sleeping peacefully down the hall in his own room and they were trying to be careful not to disturb him.

Settled beside Joss's prone form, John sat cross-legged on top of the quilt, gently compressing the covers over the length of her naked body.

After accepting his offer of a first giant portion of the green ice cream lying down, Joss struggled to sit up. Gooey drips slithered down her chin as she righted herself. Helpfully, John licked the ice cream from her jaw.

"Ya know, I think I'm better off doing this for myself."

She took the utensil from him and dug into the creamy mass. She held the covers up over her breasts as they alternated carving spoonfuls from the fast-softening pint.

After several minutes of silent eating, John placed the carton in the lamp's golden spotlight on the table.

She felt the mood shift like an electric switch being thrown. He spoke in a voice several tones lower than usual.

"I quit."

Joss looked at him, her spoon poised in mid-air.

"Quit what? You don't smoke. You don't eat junk food. You giving up sex?"

She smiled to get him to mimic her. When he didn't, she licked the precarious drips from the spoon and pressed on lightly.

"Are you giving up those five other women you got on a string? Or just me?"

"I'm going to quit my job."

He looked so intense and remote, that she revised her approach to the conversation.

"So, you just gonna quit saving innocents? Quit working with Harold? I don't believe it. Not for a minute."

"I told him today." He lowered his eyes, studying the folds in the quilt that separated their bodies.

"What did he say?"

"He said it was up to me. But he hoped I'd reconsider."

Still not looking at her, his disengagement sent a shiver through her. She felt she had to put extra heat into her reply to counter his chilly demeanor.

"Damn straight you better reconsider."

"You don't want me to quit?"

"No."

"Why?"

"You'll go crazy if you do; I'll go crazy right along with you."

"I could find a safer job."

She wanted to snort in protest at the very idea, but his cool silver eyes looked so mournful that she reined in the sharpness of her reply.

"Doing what?"

He drove his spoon deep into the ice cream before he gave her the answer, slowly and deliberately.

"Private security, maybe. Rich people always need personal protection. I could be a bodyguard."

She was surprised that he had given this so much thought. Despite the rigid set of his jaw, she decided to try another quip.

"Whitney Houston's dead. So that fantasy job of yours isn't out there anymore."

She felt relieved when the left corner of his mouth turned up a fraction. She needed to drive her point home now.

"Well, if you quit Harold, I quit you. Believe it, John, I will."

His eyes widened in protest until she could see white all around the pupils.

"But I'd be quitting _because_of you. Because of what we could have together, Joss."

"Unh unh. No, sir. You can't put that shit on me."

She started to wag the spoon at him, but placed it on the bedside table instead.

"What we _can_ have together is what we _are_ having together. Right here. Right now. This here is us. At our best. At our max. You mess with any part of the formula, then you mess with what we got going for us.

"So don't you dare do it, you hear me? Don't you dare quit on me."

She felt a kind of outrage bubble up inside her. Her words came out in short bursts, timed to the beats of her heart.

"I'm not looking for a picket fence house, John. Or daffodils in the back yard and a swing on the front porch. If you think that's me, you got the wrong damn girl."

She shuddered to an abrupt stop, her raw tirade spun out, her eyes blinking vainly against the tears.

He leaned forward and swiped a thumb across both of her cheeks.

"You finished?"

"Yeah."

"Sure?"

"Yeah."

She was embarrassed that she had wept like that, but he was smiling, his glinting eyes almost disappearing within the crinkles as his sharp cheekbones rose.

"Well, since you put it so nicely, with all those flattering touches, I guess I'll just have to reconsider."

His hands were still cold from the ice cream carton when he put them on both sides of her face.

Then his eyes shifted to serious again, their focus an inch or so above her head.

"Once upon a time, I thought I wanted to quit my job and sail around the world on my own private boat."

He directed the blazing force of his platinum gaze back to her at last.

"Now I know I don't need to do that. I can find what I want without ever leaving dry land."

He pulled her head toward him and placed a soft kiss over her trembling lips.

"Did you really tell Harold you quit?" Her words came out with little hiccups in between.

"Not really. I told him I was thinking about it."

"And what did he really say?"

"Just like I told you. He said it was up to me. But he hoped I'd reconsider."

"Will you tell him?"

"Yes."

He reached for the carton with his spoon sticking straight up out of the pistachio ice cream. He retrieved her spoon from its gooey resting spot on the table and held it out to her.

"Tomorrow."

By the time they finished all the ice cream it had melted to a sea foam green soup.

xxxxxxxxx


	3. Chapter 3

_A month after that_

Joss didn't think of herself as the motherly type.

She knew she wasn't as conventionally nurturing as other women, so she particularly enjoyed watching John's landlady, Mrs. Soni, lavish upon him large doses of maternal care from time to time.

With Taylor on a real honest-to-God Saturday night movie date with a girl, they had retreated to their red-lined booth at the rear of Pooja's restaurant where John kept a room.

But before Mrs. Soni would permit them to devour another one of her delectable vegetarian dinners, she had insisted that John let her bind up the bruised fingers on his right hand.

Like a dour sentry, she stood at their table in silent reprimand until he relented.

Joss agreed with Mrs. Soni's assessment: the ring finger and the pinkie might both be broken. But when John refused professional care, Mrs. Soni had retrieved her medical kit to do the delicate job herself.

She probed the swollen fingers, he winced. She straighten them, he hummed a tuneless air.

She positioned splints under both fingers, curving the metal struts to a natural position before she began the extravagant process of winding white surgical gauze around the injured digits. Then over the gauze she wound an extra layer of adhesive tape so that only the tips of the fingernails and the raw edges of the metal splints peeked from her bandage.

No soldier in Florence Nightingale's care ever received better battlefield nursing.

Mrs. Soni placed two aspirin pills next to a goblet of water in front of John and watched with solemn patience until he swallowed the medicine.

When he grimaced rather theatrically at the bitter taste, Mrs. Soni seemed satisfied that her medical service was complete.

Prudently, Joss kept her fingers in front of her mouth to suppress the giggles that threatened to burst forth several times during the long ordeal.

But after the motherly nurse had departed, Joss couldn't resist embroidering the incident by offering the invalid more maternal help.

"Do you want me to cut up your food for you, John?"

"Don't say another word."

Brandishing the fork in his left hand, his blue-eyed glare was warmed by the quirk of his lips and they garnished their dinner with peaceable conversation and avoided further remarks about his war wounds.

In deference to John's injuries, Joss carried the tray with their mugs of jasmine tea up the three flights of stairs to his square room above the restaurant. They finished the tea and ate almost all of the home-made ginger cookies before tumbling into bed.

They were both tired; the week had been long and tense and intermittently violent, as most were for them. The tea made them drowsy and their eyelids drooped over the cookies.

They had intended to fall right to sleep, lulled by the fragrant air wafting up from the restaurant and the comforting murmur of patrons' muffled chatter below.

But the mood heightened when John drew the bright yellow coverlet over their naked bodies.

The scent of jasmine – tea and her perfume - curled around them, insinuating itself into their minds, lubricating all their senses, and urging their limbs to slide over and under and around in graceful accord.

They combined slowly, blurring the boundaries of where one body began and the other ended. The salts of their flesh and their tears joined together; the sweetness of their mouths blended together, the throb of their pulses merged into one.

Afterwards, completed, they lay silently entwined for many moments.

Leaning forward to retrieve the coverlet again, Joss noticed a small dark blot on the sheet where she had been lying. She stretched over the stain to hide it, feeling it was a bad omen somehow.

But John saw it and ran a finger over the spot to test it: blood.

He sat up behind her, turning her around to inspect her back.

"These cuts on your shoulder." He ran a finger lightly in a circle over the abrasions.

"I must have scratched you with my hand." He held up his bandaged fingers and the rough edge of the metal splint flashed for a second in the moonlight.

He bent to kiss her left shoulder and licked at the little wounds.

"You need better than that." His tone was more somber than the occasion merited, she felt, but she said nothing as he rose from the bed.

His departure sent a draft across her neck; the chill loosed a shower of goose bumps falling to her waist. She shrugged once to recapture the lost warmth and ward off the premonition needling inside her.

When John returned from the bathroom he was carrying a tube of ointment with the tangy smell of antiseptic. She hoped it wouldn't burn too much.

He sat behind her again, his legs splayed on either side of her hips. He turned her this way and that in the pale light, painting the salve in a film across her shoulder blade.

She tried to not flinch, but there was a definite sting to the treatment, whether from the antiseptic itself or from the movement of his fingers across the torn skin, she couldn't tell.

She couldn't see his face as he worked behind her; drifting clouds obscured the half-moon hanging low over the rooftops outside the window. The darkness deepened in the room.

When he was done he drew her toward him, pulling her against his chest, his arms encircling hers, his hands clasped lightly over her stomach.

She felt the next words rumbling against her spine, vibrating through his ribs.

"I made a will."

"What?"

"I made a will."

She wanted to laugh, wanted to suppress the grim thoughts rising up in her, wanted to return to the jasmine-scented mood of a few minutes ago.

"With a lawyer and everything?"

He was serious and wouldn't be diverted, it seemed.

"No, I just wrote it out and gave it to Harold."

"So he has this will? He's the witness?"

"And the executor of my estate too."

"I don't want to hear about this, John."

She rolled her shoulders in an attempt to flee, to change the subject. But he held her firmly.

"Why not?"

"Too morbid. Too soon."

"I may die tomorrow. Or I may die in this bed, fifty years from now. But I still want Harold to know what to do with my money when it happens."

In counterpoint to these morose words, he smiled against her neck to dislodge her gloom. The technique worked for a brief moment and she tried to be light in response.

"So, you gonna tell me? Or do I have to kill you to find out what's in your will?"

He encouraged her attempt at levity and squeezed her arms against her breasts.

"If you kill me, you're automatically excluded from any benefits. I made that part crystal clear to Harold. I have to protect my ass, you know."

"Yeah, alright. So I won't kill you. Now tell me: what's in it?"

"I told Harold I want him to give everything to you."

"What! Why?"

"Because I want you to have it. I want you taken care of even if I'm not around. And anyway Harold has more money than God, so why would I leave it to him?"

The jocular tone of these last words did nothing to ease her dread.

Something sounded forced to her now; the false buoyancy of his voice straining in the top notes to float over a more turbulent current that washed over her, filling her with unease.

"Yeah, I guess."

He continued on in a rush to prevent her from interrupting again.

"And I want Taylor to be comfortable. And if there's another baby, I want her taken care of too."

"What? What do you mean? Another?"

"It could happen again."

"Again?"

"Yes."

She lowered her head but didn't try to move away from him. Lifting his clasped hands to her mouth she kissed his knuckles and the bandage encircling his damaged fingers.

When she spoke at last, it was in a strangled whisper.

"You know?"

"Yes."

"How? I mean… Did Harold? He promised…"

"No, Harold kept your secret. He didn't say anything."

Not seeing his face, only feeling his warm breath against her nape, made it easier to let her fears creep out from the dark place she had hidden them so many months ago.

"Then how?"

"You just seemed different those weeks last fall. Anxious somehow. Like you were ready to bolt from me at any time."

He tightened his arms again, as if wanting to fend off even the memory of those days.

"You looked different. And, I don't know... You felt different too."

Hitched breaths from his chest reverberated through her body.

"Felt different?"

"Yes."

He touched his left palm to her stomach and the underside of her breast.

"Just different…somehow. More tender, more soft for me. I don't know…"

His voice trailed off, leaving space for her heavy sigh.

"You know I wanted to keep it, don't you?"

"Yes, I know. It was an accident. Couldn't be helped."

She could feel his hot tears dropping along her neck and running down her back.

She needed to know where this absolution ended, if it's limit had been reached.

"Do you hate me for it?"

His quick intake of breath sounded like shock and the words came out firmly.

"No, of course not. Why would I?"

"Because… Because I didn't tell you?"

"I wanted you to share it with me, yes. I wondered why you didn't. But I didn't want to make you do it."

She sobbed roughly then. And her next words came out in a wail.

"You were waiting for me."

"Yes, Joss. I was waiting for you."

She leaned back against him and turned her head to the left, dropping kisses against his heart as she wept.

"I couldn't figure out the right way, the right time to tell you."

"I know. There isn't a right time or right way, is there?" His open mouth moving against her shoulder felt hot and wet, pulling at her skin.

She thought about the broken fingers, about the clumsy bandage and the exposed metal splint, the abraded skin, the salve, the revelation, the confession.

Each little knot in a net of trust leading on inexorably to another and another and another; unavoidable, required, and necessary.

She needed to get all of this out at last; this pressing thing clawing inside her had to come out now. If it didn't come out, if she delayed again, she feared that she never would be able to expel it at all.

"I wanted to so much, John. I wanted to tell you before Christmas, but you seemed so happy then. You even told me once that you felt happy. So how could I tell you then?

"I wanted to tell you when we met on the pier, that midnight after Rikers. But then the time was taken from us. You were taken from me and I couldn't tell you then.

"I wanted to tell you after Harold saved you from the bomb. But you seemed so distant then. So detached that I could never find a way to get the words right. To reach you the way I wanted."

She sputtered to a halt, gasping in all of the misery and the loss they shared.

For a long while she wept and he wept. Her skin felt soothed by the tears coursing down the channel of her spine.

Then he said the only thing that mattered to her.

"It's alright. We're alright. We will be alright."

They lay down together again on the damp sheets, her body enfolded in the curve of his. He pressed his mouth against her nape and she could feel the flat of his tongue moving against her skin, suckling, laving in a primordial rhythm.

He pulled the coverlet over their bodies again and they slept past dawn.

_Author's Note: The events in the immediate aftermath of Carter's miscarriage and the consolation offered by Finch are examined in a previous story, _The Grain_, posted here: s/8563612/1/The-Grain_


End file.
